


Sacrifice

by anoyo



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-01
Updated: 2008-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:44:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/anoyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watanuki gets a case that has more to do with growing to understand himself, and Doumeki, than the customer.  Spoilers for current arc in Author's Notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Written before Watanuki actually took over the damn shop. Uhm. Yes. Now, one to the real notes:
> 
> I came up with two prompts for myself [for my 25 Days of Christmas, 2008], and I'll let you know now: they're the first and last fics. Basically, this first is an introduction to the holiday season, and the feeling that I believe comes with the holiday season, and the last is the conclusion, or ultimate of the holiday season, to me. (I suppose you could go check prompts now and see which fic is last, but that just might confuse you as to what on earth I think the holidays are.) Basically, this was me making myself happy with an idea I'd wanted to write. ♥ Beta'd by [Zanzou](http://zanzou-chan.livejournal.com), despite not knowing the canon. She rocks! Originally posted [here](http://anoyo.livejournal.com/128278.html).

In retrospect, it might not have come out of nowhere, there might have been signs, symptoms even, of the foreboding doom, looming over events and smoking a cool chain of glib cigarettes. In retrospect, it was inevitable, really, and he'd had more than enough warnings. In retrospect, well, you know what they say: hindsight is 20/20.

Hindsight really had nothing to do with his present position; something between "sitting next to" and "sprawled over" Doumeki as a poor, random customer walked into the shop, letting out a somewhat surprised, "Oh!" as she put a hand demurely over her mouth, stepping back a little.

"I'm so sorry!" the woman continued, only adding to Watanuki's not-flaring-by-sheer-self-control cheeks. "I don't know what came over me, I just wandered in, how rude of me, I'll just be going--"

Watanuki shoved himself off Doumeki's lap -- also perhaps by sheer self-control -- and into a standing position, fixing his yukata as he did so. "Please wait, ma'am," he said steadily, impressing himself, "it is not coincidence that you have wandered into this shop. Yes, this is a shop," he continued, regaining composure, "for a very special clientele." He pushed his classes up his nose, smiling politely and gesturing widely, a move he had only begun to master in his twenties, fuller adult frame allowing it to not simply look like a scarecrow's pose. "This shop is for granting wishes. If you can enter the shop, that means that you have a wish, and your coming here wasn't a choice. It was _hitsuzen_, and we were always meant to have this conversation."

There was a more comfortable table in the main room than had been there in the past; a particular quirk of Watanuki's was to always try to be as welcoming as possible. It was bred into him, he liked to think.

To this table Watanuki gestured the customer, a shy woman who introduced herself as Karen, and told Watanuki an unintentionally heartbreaking story, culminating in the death of her fiancé and the loss of the ring he had proposed to her with. Her desire, which she openly stated and Watanuki barely even doubted enough to check, was the retrieval of that ring.

Granting the wish came in many options, of course, options that Watanuki had long since gained an intricate understanding of. Were she asking selfishly, there was an option; were she asking selflessly, there was an option; if he wished to simply put the ring in her hand, there was an option. It was an art, Watanuki had learned, to find the option that best fit the situation. Watanuki's nature was to be kind, loving, and forgiving. Were his nature the only factor in deciding which option, he would always choose that with the lowest cost, for each came with its particular cost, easily seen when one knew where to look.

But nature was not the only key; balance was a part of this, too, the choosing of an option. Balance to the customer's entrance, to the customer's request, had to be maintained for the balance of the service and payment to even be relevant.

Doumeki's eyes stayed on his back, both comfortingly warm and blazingly revealing, as Watanuki explained to the woman that everything had its own price. Watanuki asked her a series of questions, some obviously more painful than others, the option that had been correct being a manner of telling her where the ring had been lost through her own memories, and then reassuring her that if she went to where it had been lost, it would be recovered.

It was not a significant service, nor was it particularly taxing for the universe. The woman handed him a locket that she had around her neck, Watanuki stopping her before she could tell him from whence it had come. There were some things he knew, and some things he wished not to know, and sometimes, he didn't quite know which was which.

As the woman left, a look mixed with gratitude and pain in her eyes, Watanuki handed the necklace to Moro, allowing himself the comfort of knowing she knew what to do with it.

Maru and Moro flitted out of the room, happily dancing and singing something Watanuki paid no attention to. Rather, he returned to the seat he'd had before, but slouched backwards, against the chaise, rather than Doumeki. "That was only mildly embarrassing," he said faintly, closing his eyes.

Doumeki shrugged in response. "For you or for her?"

"Can I say 'both'?" Watanuki asked, cracking an eye open to give Doumeki a sarcastic look.

Before Doumeki could respond, however, Mokona said, from next to the chaise, "She won't remember; she'll get her ring back and move on to another desire, though I doubt the next one will find any relevancy here." He hopped onto the arm of the chaise, bouncing a little. "No matter how much the world changes, hopes and wishes remain the same. Because of that, this place is like something removed from the flow of time, isn't it?"

Smiling at Mokona's uncharacteristic seriousness, Watanuki simply borrowed from Doumeki. Shrugging, he said, "It's appropriate, though, isn't it? If wishes and desires changed, then so would the fabric of the universe." He smiled. "And then I'd need to change, too, wouldn't I?"

When Yuuko had left Watanuki the shop, parting in the manner of all great magicians -- in the dead of night, just a magically exuberant note and a lack of most of their alcohol -- she had left four final pieces of information.

The first, one Watanuki had highly suspected, but was probably glad to see clarified, that because he worked alongside the universe, he aged alongside the universe, which was to say not really at all.

The second was that he should always follow Mokona's advice, unless that advice had something to do with catfish, in which case he should make his own judgments and stuff Mokona in the pink chest in the storeroom. (Watanuki took this piece as probably a long story, and he didn't particularly want to know, but he had his suspicions.)

The third was that all good magicians needed pseudonyms, because real names held power, after all, and were potentially dangerous. Her addendum to this piece of advice, however, was that "Watanuki," was a wonderful pseudonym, because it wasn't correct anymore, now was it? It gave away practically nothing that was real, anyway.

The last piece of advice was the most cryptic, saying merely, "Never forget, and never forgive. Rather, make sure your memories include nothing that requires forgiveness."

Cryptic, yes, but Watanuki felt he knew what she had meant. Felt it, in fact, literally, when Doumeki leaned over to pinch the skin on the back of his hand, saying, "Go eat something," a complete non-sequitur from the conversation being had. "Before you fall asleep and forget."

Batting off Doumeki's hand without much effort, Watanuki replied, "Hah! I'm not the one with that problem, remember? I don't need someone else to cook for me or remind me to eat!"

Mokona snickered, but Doumeki merely smirked. "I suppose I don't, either, do I?" He pinched Watanuki again. "Which sort of contests the 'nothing ever changes' thing, now doesn't it?"

"Not if that happened before things stopped changing," Mokona said brightly. "The it wouldn't contest anything at all, inferentially."

"I think you need more alcohol," Doumeki replied simply, eliciting a laugh from Mokona, and a "Hm," from Watanuki.

Perhaps without warning, Watanuki reached out and pinched the back of Doumeki's hand, a mirror gesture. "I'm disregarding that change," he said decisively, "because it's the only way to follow Yuuko's advice. And if I'm going to follow some of it, I should follow all of it, and I really want to lock Mokona in the pink chest one day."

As Mokona puffed out his chest in pretend outrage, Doumeki pinched Watanuki back once more. "I think it's stupid advice," he said. "And, anyway, you're ignoring half of it by following the other half." Doumeki knew Yuuko's advice as well as Watanuki himself did, and he wasn't one to let Watanuki use it against him.

"I remember it fine, I just choose to remember it differently," Watanuki said calmly, adding privately that she had perhaps given that piece of advice precisely for this reason. "Because then I'd have to still be mad at you, you know."

Doumeki nodded. "I know."

"Because it wasn't your place," Watanuki continued, finding the energy to turn his head and glare at Doumeki.

"I know."

"And then I'd have to be mad about all the other times you'd done things just like that, because you always did, even when it wasn't necessary." Watanuki's words, though pointed and close to Doumeki's face, weren't ferocious or loud. Rather, they were soft, spoken straightly, as though inarguable truth.

"It was always necessary," Doumeki said, equally without heat.

Changing the subject, sort of, Watanuki said, "The anniversary's coming up soon, isn't it? In the sense, of course, that time has not actually stopped."

There was a pause at that, before Doumeki said, "Yeah."

"You're an idiot," Watanuki said, as though delivering an oath.

Doumeki smirked. "You say that every year."

A comment to which Watanuki nodded sagely in response. "Tradition is very important," and then, more softly, "ten years."

"Yeah."

Watanuki's eyes, blue and not-blue, stayed on Doumeki's face, soft and young, the silence lingering. It wasn't uncomfortable, but neither was it pleasant.

Finally, "I want tempura for lunch." Mokona jumped off the arm of the chaise before Watanuki's swipe could reach him, dancing out of reach.

Standing up, Watanuki scowled, saying in a shrilly reminiscent voice, "You glutton, I'm the one who's done all the work, why do you get to decide?" Rather than waiting for a response, Watanuki turned and made the walk to the kitchen, muttering about ingrates and Mokonas that were really going to get fat one of these days.

Doumeki sent a glance Mokona's way, eyebrow raised neatly. Mokona laughed and hopped back onto the chaise, settling in the warm spot Watanuki's body had left.

"If only distracting him were still that simple," Doumeki said dryly. "Or ever that simple."

Mokona shrugged its ears, a gesture Doumeki had long since grown used to. "If he can pretend, so can we."

"Hn," Doumeki answered, letting a silence grow again before saying, "I wonder what that woman really thought, entering to see a young man with different-colored eyes leaning on nothing."

"Probably that it was a dream," Mokona replied, yawning. "Or that she was on very strange drugs."


End file.
